All Together Now
by Checkerboards
Summary: One, two, three, four, all the rogues behind cell doors. Five, six, seven eight nine ten, caught again. Black, white, green, blue, where there was one now there's two. Pink, brown, yellow orange and red in bunk beds!
1. Two's Company

The fire flickered merrily under the warm night sky. Sparks, like tiny flares, rocketed up from the blaze, swirling in the updraft as they soared up and winked out. The pretty orange flames danced in the breeze, flashing here, sparking there, and incidentally destroying quite a significant bit of Arkham Asylum as they passed. A crowd of inmates, lightly scorched, clumped together on the lawn under the watchful eyes of a group of well-armed guards.

Two burly men waited impatiently in the shadows by the far-off razor-wire fence. "You sure this was the plan?" one asked, staring at the flames as they swarmed up a long-dead ivy vine and set another windowsill alight.

"Mr. Scarface said to torch the building."

"Yeah, but he ain't comin' out like he said he would. Where is he?"

"Dunno. Lemme see those plans he drew."

The first man dug a much-folded sheet of paper out of his back pocket and held it out. The second man snatched it and unfolded it, squinting to make out the details in the fire's flickery orange light. Then, with a rapid-fire stream of profanity, he rolled the paper into a tube and swatted the first man over the head with it. "You had it backwards, you idiot! We was supposed to burn the _northwest_ corner! Scarface is gonna kill us!"

"Oh." Sirens wailed in the distance as a fleet of fire trucks lit up the night with flashing red lights. "You think we should go?" The silence was broken only by the crackle of the distant fire. He turned, wondering why his partner wasn't answering, and saw only empty air. "Hey, wait for me!" He pushed himself through the small gap in the fence and disappeared into the woods.

* * *

There were no fire alarms in the rogues' wing. The caring and compassionate citizens on Arkham's board of directors had agreed that nothing but a five-alarm fire should get the rogues out of their cells, and if there _was_ a five-alarm fire, they'd concentrate on saving the inmates who _hadn't_ racked up death counts in the triple digits first. Besides, if they were in any danger, surely Batman would go in there and get them. And if he didn't...would anyone really miss them?

And so the rogues passed a peaceful, quiet night, until they were rudely awakened at four in the morning and dragged, protesting, down the hall to the rec room. They grumbled complaints as a team of antsy guards watched them with bloodshot eyes.

This was hardly the first time that they'd been unceremoniously dumped in the rec room. Over the years, nearly all of them had attempted an explosive exit from their plexiglass cages, and every time, the rest of them wound up in the rec room while the escapee's cell was hastily blocked off from further inmate access.

No one had escaped this time, though. The usual crowd of top-ranking villains were all present and accounted for. The Joker and Harley Quinn were taking advantage of this rare moment of togetherness to have a quick, cuddly escape-plan brainstorming session on the couch. Beside them, the Scarecrow focused on a book, pointedly ignoring the stream of pet names and endearments flowing from the pair of clowns. Two-Face, lounging in a chair near the window, toyed absently with his coin. The Riddler and the Mad Hatter, with nothing else to do, started up a halfhearted chess game in the corner. Across the room, Poison Ivy glared hate at the back of the Joker's head. The Ventriloquist had a furious, cringing argument with himself in the shadow of the bookshelf. A loose collection of lower-ranking villains kept to themselves in areas not claimed by Gotham's most infamous, whispering to one another and conducting furtive business under the distracted eyes of the guards.

The door creaked open. A doctor with black circles of exhaustion under her eyes stuck her head into the room. "Nygma," she called tiredly.

Eddie rose to his feet and sauntered casually over to her, ignoring Jervis' mutter of dismay at the abandoned game. "You called?"

"This way." She and an orderly took him by the arms and marched him down the hall. As they bustled along, Eddie took the opportunity to look around. No cells were reduced to rubble. No guards waited nervously in front of gaping holes in the wall. Something big had clearly happened, though. This doctor – Dr. Ossian, he thought her name was – worked the day shift, so why was she here at four-thirty in the morning? Why did she look so exhausted? And why did she reek of smoke and sweat?

"My cell's back there," he pointed out as they hurtled past it.

"We're moving you down here." They guided him into his new home with all the gentleness and kindness generally shown by Arkham's staff.

Eddie looked around, ignoring the mild ache in his back where they'd shoved him. His few personal items were tossed in a corner, jumbled with a bunch of thick textbooks. And on the far wall, a set of bunk beds -

Bunk beds?

"I'm not sharing my cell!" he snapped, stalking back up to the door.

"You are now." The doctor shoved her glasses back up her sweat-slicked nose and focused exhaustedly on her clipboard. A new pair of orderlies moved in behind her, waiting for instructions.

Eddie stood at the front of the cell, arms folded. "No, I'm not."

"You're moving. End of story."

"Why on earth do you think that I need a roommate?" he protested.

She shoved her glasses up again. "There was a fire last night," she said, with sleep-deprived hysteria slowly cranking her voice up through the octaves, "and we had to evacuate the entire low-security wing and they have to be housed _somewhere_ because we could only find a few open spots at all the other institutions so they all have to stay here until we can find a better place for them, which means we need more room, which means that you and everyone else in the rest of the asylum are doubling up for the good of everyone. _Okay_?"

Before Eddie could answer in a very firm negative, he was interrupted by an urgent electronic chirping from her pocket. She peered at her beeper, swore, and shoved her clipboard at one of the orderlies. "Take over," she ordered, hurrying out of the hall as quickly as her high heels would allow.

"Right," the orderly said, reading the list. "Get Crane down here. Now." Two orderlies peeled off of the pack and hurried to the rec room.

"_Crane_?" Eddie scowled. "I am not having _him_ as a roommate. Not again. Not after last time."

"Why? Scared?" taunted the orderly, grinning at what he must have considered a razor-sharp retort.

"Jonathan Crane does not _scare _me. He _annoys _me," Eddie explained, aggrieved. "Can't you put me with someone else?"

"Who would you like? The only two left without roommates are Junkyard Dog and Zsasz."

They were interrupted by the abrupt arrival of Crane, who was being dragged along the hall double-time by a pair of guards. He stopped cold at the sight of Edward Nygma standing, arms folded, in front of a set of bunk beds. It hardly took a brilliant scientific mind to figure out what was going on. "Nygma?" he said. "No. I refuse to share a cell with _him_."

"_Me_?" Eddie snapped, stung. "What's wrong with _me_?"

"Would you like a list?" Crane shot back.

"You're hardly perfect, you know," Eddie growled.

"At least I don't talk in my sleep!"

"Who says you don't?"

"You cannot leave me here with him. This man," Crane announced to the orderlies, "once spent an entire _month _singing "I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General" without stopping."

"It was stuck in my head!" Eddie said defensively.

"And by the end of the month it was stuck in _all_ of our heads," Crane retorted.

"So what?" Eddie snapped. "I seem to recall _you_ chanting nursery rhymes nonstop for half a year."

"As I've explained _many times_, that was caused by a reaction between the medications forced on me here!" Crane growled.

"Shut up!" the orderly screamed as his patience abruptly disappeared. The two rogues, jolted out of their argument, turned to stare at him. "You. In. Now," he commanded, nearly yanking Crane's arm from its socket as he propelled him toward the open door. The two other orderlies swung into position and shoved the lanky rogue as hard as they could into the cell. Since Crane weighed approximately the same amount as a large puppy, this meant that he catapulted into the cell as if he'd been fired from a cannon and crashed directly into Eddie. They went down in a horrified tangle of limbs on the bottom bunk, each fighting to get away from the other as soon as possible.

Eddie clawed free of Crane's flailing arms and tumbled onto the floor. His door – _their_ door – slammed shut.

Eddie picked himself up, dusting a smear of dirt off of the leg of his jumpsuit. Crane, still on the bed, curled on his side, face turned toward the wall, and went motionless.

"I'll take the top bunk then?" Eddie asked. There was no reply. Either Jonathan Crane had been taking lessons in narcolepsy from Mr. Zzz or he was stubbornly feigning unconsciousness to avoid having to acknowledge Eddie's presence.

Eddie hauled himself into the top bunk and slouched against the wall, feet dangling over the edge of the mattress. So now he was bunkmates with Crane. Perfect. Anyone who said that you shouldn't fear monsters under the bed had never tried to sleep with the Lord of Terror lurking four feet below their shoulderblades.

Not that he was _scared _of Crane, not when he'd been shorn of his burlap and toxin-spewing gadgetry. He was just annoying. Even right now, pretending to be asleep, the Scarecrow was annoying, because that meant that he, the Riddler, was being ignored. And that was a state of affairs that could not – no, _must _not – continue. Quietly, in a voice tinged with spite, he began to sing.

"_I am the very model of a modern major-general, I've information vegetable, animal and mineral_-"

"Nygma," Crane warned from somewhere below him.

Obligingly, he switched tunes.

"_Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock_-"

A pair of angry feet slammed into the springs directly underneath him. With a smirking smile on his face, Eddie settled back and watched the orderlies parading by, taking the other inmates to their new homes.

* * *

Jervis Tetch stumbled through the hallways, an orderly's hand clamped tightly on his right shoulder. The man pulled him around the corner and shoved him inside the only cell with its door still open. The orderly, and the three who had been keeping guard on the open door, hurried away to their next inmate.

Jervis tugged his jumpsuit back into place and took his first questioning look around his new room. A set of bunk beds took up most of one wall. Sprawled across the bottom bunk was Harvey Dent, scowling stony-faced past him into the corridor, idly flipping his coin in one hand.

"_Dear, dear. How queer everything is today. And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've changed in the night_?", he muttered to himself. He approached the end of the bed, scrubbed his palms dry on the legs of his pants, and leaped upward, trying to catch the top rail with outstretched fingers. He tumbled back to the ground and leaped again, undeterred.

Life wasn't easy for Jervis. Oh, it wasn't all bad – after all, he had an enviable mountain of intelligence crammed into his skull. On the other hand, though, who remembered his IQ when confronted with his bottom-of-the-barrel looks, his outdated fashion sense, and his overwhelming obsession with Alice in Wonderland? To put the icing on the cake, all of these less-than-sterling traits had been crammed into a body that barely cleared four foot eight with his shoes on.

"_Three inches is such a wretched height to be,_" he mumbled, resting for a moment with one hand on the bedpost. Maybe he could climb up? He put a tentative sneakered foot on the bottom mattress and immediately removed it as Harvey glared an angry Look at him out of his scarred eye.

It would have to be jumping, then. He readied himself for another attempt, squeaking his shoes on the floor like a bull pawing the ground.

_Zzzz-thwap _went the coin. Harvey squinted at the small silver circle in his palm, sighed, and rolled off of the small, hard mattress. "Here," he grumbled, swinging onto the top bunk with athletic ease.

"_Thank you, sir_," Jervis offered meekly.

"Just shut up."

* * *

Dr. Ossian paced down the hallway, writing down names on her clipboard. Crane and Nygma, check. Dent and Tetch, check. Harley Quinn and the Joker, check. Wesker and -

She stopped so fast that her high heels _skreek_ed on the linoleum and hurried back a cell. "Who authorized this?" she demanded, glowering at Gotham's most wanted couple.

The Joker, from his regal cross-legged seat on the head of the single bed, raised one delicate green eyebrow. "Why, you did," he said with mock surprise. Harley, curled on her side with her head on his knee, beamed at the doctor.

"I did no such thing! Howard! Howard, get over here!" A beefy, balding guard sauntered over, peering suspiciously into the cell. "Who put them in there?"

"That's what the paper said to do," Howard offered, shrugging.

"What?! Give me that!" She snatched the paper out of his hands. The Joker had originally had a line on the paper all to himself, since any potential cellmate of his would rapidly turn into a potential corpse. Someone – and she had a fair idea who – had scribbled "and Harley Quinn" after his name, with a small smiley face in a heart dotting the I.

"For the love of...You! Get out of there!" she snapped, beckoning angrily into the cell.

"Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow," the Joker said, sweeping to his feet and favoring Harley with a bow. He sashayed toward the door, leering at the doctor.

"Not you," the doctor said through gritted teeth. "Quinn. Let's go."

"But this is _my_ cell!" Harley protested.

"Was," corrected the doctor. "Move!"

Harley folded her arms defiantly. "No."

"I don't have time for this, Harley," the doctor said, trying for stern but falling short. "You are supposed to be down the hall with..." she checked her notes. "Dahl."

"Baby Doll? That loser?" Harley griped. "You didn't even put me with Red?"

"Why on earth would we put you with the same woman that you've broken out with no less than six times?" demanded the doctor.

"'Cuz ya wanted to try for lucky seven?" Harley suggested brightly.

"Oooooo," the Joker whistled, staring at the doctor. "Look at that vein go! Ten bucks she pops an artery before the day's over!"

"Shut up," the doctor hissed. "Quinn, you're going to Dahl's cell. Get moving."

"Uh, doc?" the orderly said. "Dahl's in solitary downstairs. She attacked Chuck when we were moving her."

"So what?"

"So she bit him. In the...you know."

"Great. Uh..." the doctor consulted her sheet again and sighed at her complete lack of options. "Put her in with Isley."

"Or ya could just leave me here!" Harley suggested brightly.

"Quinn. Get out here or I will personally make your life a living hell."

"Oh yeah? I'd like to see ya try," Harley sneered.

The doctor's eyes narrowed. "Howard? Friitawa doesn't have a roommate yet, does she?" she asked, not taking her gaze from Harley's blue eyes.

"No way," Howard snorted. "You said not to put anyone in there with her cuz it's a biohazard."

"Well, I'm sure a former doctor would be able to protect herself just fine -"

"All right, all right, I'll go with Red. Geez," Harley interrupted, somersaulting off the bed. "Bye, Puddin'," she said, kissing him on the cheek.

He kissed her back. "Sayonara, pumpkin pie," he called as she flounced off in the care of the doctor and Howard. Then, with a happy sigh of contentment, he stretched himself full-length on the mattress and began to plan his imminent escape.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Everything Jervis says is from 'Alice in Wonderland'. 'I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General' is from Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Pirates of Penzance'. Don't forget to check out my tumblr at checker-boards dot tumblr dot com for more stories! _


	2. Slumber Party

The days passed slowly inside Arkham Asylum. The nights, however, dragged on and on in a seemingly endless treacly drip of time.

Lights-out was generally called at eight-thirty sharp. That merely meant that the lights in the cells and half of the fluorescent lights in the hallway were turned off. The other half stayed on, keeping the asylum perpetually lit in a twilight of madness. Theoretically, it was an aid to the security guards, who would notice shenanigans more easily in half-light than total darkness. But because rogues were generally creatures of the night, having the lights on merely meant that they could still somewhat keep to their abnormally normal schedules.

_Thump. Thump._

Poison Ivy lay stiffly on her bunk, fingernails digging into her palms.

_Thump. Thump_.

She would ignore this. She could rise above the annoyance gripping her soul and think of something else. Something happy. Something -

_Thump. Thump_.

"Harley," she said warningly, rolling over and craning her head to peer down into the bottom bunk.

Below her, Harley sprawled on her stomach, idly kicking the bedframe with one foot. She looked up from her magazine, propped to make the most use of the light from the hall. "Whaddaya want, Red?"

"Stop kicking the bed."

"Oh. Sure thing." Her foot dropped to the open air past the end of the mattress. Ivy closed her eyes again, attempting to escape her surroundings by imagining that she was somewhere else. Somewhere green. A rainforest, with lovely big flowers and friendly vines and -

_Thump. Thump_.

"_Harley_!" Ivy snapped.

"Huh? Oh, right. Sorry."

* * *

Arnold Wesker sat on the bottom bunk. Mr. Scarface's familiar wooden weight rested on his knee. One of the little splintery dents he'd acquired in their many bouts with Batman was pressing rather painfully on his kneecap.

He didn't move, though. Mr. Scarface was happy where he was, and so there he'd stay. Arnold's comfort didn't even enter into it.

Together, they watched the restricted world of the asylum go by their large plexiglass window. Orderlies, hurriedly finishing the errands that they hadn't quite gotten to before lights out, ran last-minute medication deliveries and did another round of headcounts to make sure that everyone was still there, still behaving, and still alive. A pair of them, loaded with bundles of makeshift bedding, hurried to the rec room to set up another row of temporary sleeping quarters for the displaced low-security inmates.

An orderly knocked on their window, one foot resting on the bottom shelf of a rattly old medication cart. "Wesker, nothing at night," he muttered to himself, marking the name off on his clipboard. "Mayo. _Mayo_. Mitch, get your lazy ass over here!"

Mumbling complaints, the Condiment King oozed out of the top bunk and padded barefoot over to the door. The orderly slid the tiny hatch open and handed him a small paper cup. He swallowed the pills dry, handed the cup back, and shuffled back to the bed.

Scarface's beady eyes watched him as he pulled himself back up onto the top bunk. Arnold could feel the rage pulsing from the small figure in his lap.

Mr. Scarface had kept him up for hours on their first night in the new cell. He was absolutely livid to be housed with someone as inconsequential as the Condiment King. He was a big name in this town, dammit, and he deserved a better class of roommate than some mook with a ketchup gun. Look at everyone else on the A-list. Joker, Croc and Clayface had cells to themselves! They hadn't moved Freeze out of his cell either – okay, so he'd probably die if they did, but still – and even that nutcake Friitawa had her own cell, and all _she _did was breathe out nerve toxins. Quinn and Ivy, Dent and Tetch, Nygma and Crane – all of them the best of the worst, and who was _he_ housed with? The crappy little Condiment King.

To make matters worse, he shouldn't have had to room with anyone at all. If his lousy henchmen hadn't screwed up, he'd be on the outside right now. (That, at least, hadn't been included in his rant – if anyone found out that _he_ was responsible for the whole of Arkham having to buddy up, he'd probably find himself sharing a bed with Wesker in the hospital wing – that is, unless it had been torched as well.)

Mr. Scarface had ranted with all the passion of an opera singer for hours, ignoring Arnold's frantic pleas to yell a little quieter, please sir, Mr. Scarface, sir. He'd gone on and on, nearly foaming at the mouth, until a sleep-deprived and extremely pissed-off Mitchell Mayo slammed himself down from the top bunk and threw the diminutive crime boss headfirst into the toilet. Since then, Scarface had kept his fury under wraps, plotting a silent and well-deserved revenge on the buffoon.

"I'm tired. Lights out, dummy," Mr. Scarface ordered, twisting to pin Arnold with his wooden glare.

"Yessir, Mr. Scarface," Arnold nodded, gently tucking his boss into bed. The pillow, which was as fluffed as an ancient asylum-issued pillow could be, stretched whitely under the tiny wooden head. He pulled the blanket up, tucking the small body in tightly. "Good night, sir."

"Ah, shut up."

Arnold retreated to his corner with the sheet that Mr. Scarface had graciously allowed him to have for bedding. He settled down, rolling himself tightly in against the cold linoleum, and shivered himself to sleep.

* * *

"Harley, if you don't stop kicking the bed, I'm going to wring your neck."

"Hmm? Oh yeah. Sorry, Red."

* * *

Being locked in a tiny room was bad. Being locked in a tiny room with someone else was worse. Being locked in a tiny room with the Scarecrow was hell.

The Riddler burst out of his blankets, gasping for breath. Sweat darkened the neck of his jumpsuit and curled the hair at his temples. He gripped the sheets tightly, willing himself to calm down as quietly as possible.

Edward Nygma had nightmares. Every week or so, some demon from his past would wander out of his subconscious and take the stage in his dreams, accompanied by only the finest of imaginary torments. They were worse whenever he was trapped inside Arkham - more frequent, more vivid, and definitely more terrifying. And now the Scarecrow lurked not six feet away from him. It was bad enough waking up in a panting, sweaty tangle of sheets without having someone take notes on your terror.

He'd tried everything to avoid having nightmares while they were locked up together. He'd tried deep breathing exercises that had left him dreaming of mine collapses and underwater catastrophes. He'd tried muscle relaxation and dreamed about being buried alive. In desperation, he'd actually taken the medication that the orderlies had brought by, and perversely, it had kept him awake all night, staring at the ceiling. He'd almost suspect that the Scarecrow had dosed him with toxin, except that they hadn't been out of each other's sight for five days and nights and Crane's toxins tended to do a lot more than cause a few meager little nightmares.

Not that the nightmares were particularly _little _from where he was sitting, but no matter. Heart racing, knees trembling, he desperately tried to forget the past that loomed before him as if it had happened only yesterday. He was fine. He was _fine_. He was an adult now, and he could protect himself against anything. Well, nearly anything, anyway. His father, certainly – ten seconds in one of Eddie's best deathtraps would prove to the bastard just whose turn it was to push the other around, for a change. Slowly, so slowly, the panic faded from his thoughts.

He blotted the sweat from his forehead with the back of his jumpsuited arm and looked sideways into the dimly lit hallway. What was that? He froze in place like a rabbit on a freeway, staring at the dim shape of a shadowy figure outlined against the window.

Crane, folded into an uncomfortable-looking tailor's seat on the floor, turned a page in his book. He raised his head and looked toward Eddie, his face obscured in shadow.

"What?" Eddie snapped, yanking his blankets out of their nightmare-tangled knot. "Did I spoil your fun by waking up?"

Crane sighed and closed his book after carefully noting the page number. "There is a time and a place for research, Nygma, and that time is _not_ when I would rather be sleeping." He tucked the book back into the stack on the floor and returned to his own bed. The springs squeaked as he made himself comfortable.

"Come on. Do you really expect me to believe that you weren't over there watching me?"

"Did you imagine that I was holding a book merely for decoration? I was _reading_." Springs squeaked again. "At any rate, Nygma, you have been screaming in your sleep for years. Do you really think I have anything left to learn from studying _you_?"

"Oh, shut up," Eddie snapped, yanking the blanket over his head.

A muffled chuckle, dry and rusty from disuse, echoed from below him.

* * *

"STOP KICKING THE BED!"

* * *

Harvey Dent's wheezy, rattly snore filled the cell. First the snort – that hideously loud blorting noise that sounded like he was suctioning out his brain. Then the long, wheezy inhalation, followed by a stuttery buzzing drone that drilled into the air like a swarm of fat, angry bumblebees.

Jervis wrapped his thin pillow a little tighter around his head. Dent was snoring _again_. Couldn't he give it a break, just for one night? Maybe even two, to go with his theme? For five nights they'd been in this cell, and for five long, dim, sleepless nights Two-Face had wheezed and choked all night long.

Maybe the acid that had scarred his face had burned all the way through to the middle of his head. Maybe the inside of his head looked just as bad as the outside did. Maybe _that_ was why Jervis hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in ages. How was he supposed to sleep with all of this _noise_?

A guard banged his flashlight on the window. "Tetch! You in there?" he bellowed.

Harvey's snores choked, sputtered, and died. "Keep it down out there," he snapped, squinting in the flashlight's sudden bright beam.

"_I never was so ordered about before, in all my life, never!_" Jervis grumbled, poking his head out from under the pillow.

The guard marked them down on his clipboard and sauntered away. Silence, soft and golden, filled the cell with warm, cottony stillness.

Harvey Dent shifted irritably on the top bunk. He'd been having a dream – a good one, for once – and that idiot had woken him up. Didn't he have the common courtesy to be _quiet _at three in the morning? Didn't he know how hard it was to sleep around here?

Below him, Jervis flopped noisily onto his stomach. He chirped a soft, sleepy giggle into his pillow.

Oh, no.

"_The poor little thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it._"

No, no no.

"_As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it (which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) she carried it out into the open air._"

NO!

"_If I don't take this child away with me," thought Alice, "they're sure to kill it in a day or two. Wouldn't it be murder to leave it behind?_"

Two-Face slammed a balled-up fist into the mattress. It had started again. The quotes. The poetry. The recitations. As if it wasn't bad enough that the little twerp spoke only in quotes during the day – did he have to talk in his sleep and fill the night with Victorian nonsense too? How was he supposed to sleep with all of this _noise_?

He flung himself onto his belly and savaged his pillow, trying to get it bunched into some kind of comfortable shape. The pillow, flattened by decades of heavy use, refused to fluff. With a growl of frustration, he threw the stupid thing on the floor.

"_Don't grunt_," Jervis murmured happily, "_that's not at all a proper way of expressing yourself_."

* * *

"HARLEEN FRANCES QUINZEL IF YOU DON'T STOP KICKING THE BED _RIGHT NOW_ I AM GOING TO EVISCERATE YOU!"

Harley tossed the magazine onto the floor and slid under the covers. "Geez, Red. You just had to ask."

(_to be continued_)


	3. Surprise!

Arkham Asylum's lawns were usually quite beautiful in the spring. Gently sloping hills and soft-edged valleys gleamed a lush, emerald green in the warm golden sunlight. Flowers bloomed in scattered, colorful patches in a soft rainbow of vivid colors.

Now, though, an ugly black scar littered with debris marred the land where a full third of the asylum used to sit. The low-security wing, the intake area, the lobby and the staff room – all of them had gone up in a spectacular orange blaze that had, thankfully, been put out before any of the high-security inmates had to be pried from their cells. The only color left on the muddy, tire-tracked lawns was the dull, dirty yellow of construction equipment as building crews did their best to frankenstein the asylum back together.

But a little thing like a four-floor fire hadn't stopped life inside the truncated remains of the asylum. Some things had to continue on as usual. The inmates, no matter how inhuman their actions, still needed petty human things like food to survive. Meals were served, medications were dispensed, and as for the rest of the asylum's responsibilities – well, why bother paying therapists that didn't do any therapy?

Of course, therapy was a tricky proposition during the doubled-up lockdown. Any available space that might have been used for private sessions had been eaten up by the displaced inmate population. Offices had been emptied and reworked into makeshift cells. Rec rooms had been packed with some of the more inoffensive examples of Arkham's population. And so, making the best of a bad situation, the therapists went cell-to-cell, doling out therapy in double-sized chunks to the trapped inmates.

Dr. Baldwin pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. The folding chair beneath him squeaked in protest as he leaned forward. "Gentlemen, really. One of you has to have _something_ to say."

Harvey Dent and Jervis Tetch, seated on opposite ends of the bottom bunk, stared resolutely away from one another, arms crossed firmly across their chests.

"Harvey?" Dr. Baldwin pressed, leaning into his line of sight. "You look tired."

Harvey Dent glared a poisonous look out of the corner of his good eye. "Maybe if _someone_ didn't talk in his sleep all night long -"

"_That's right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!_" Jervis grumbled.

The coin went up. The coin came down. Harvey's face twisted into an ugly – well, ugli_er_ – expression. He glowered at the window, pretending that he hadn't heard Jervis open his mouth.

"All right," Dr. Baldwin sighed, leaning against the back of his seat as he paged through his clipboard of notes. "Look, gentlemen, I know that living together can't be easy - "

"You don't know the half of it," Two-Face muttered darkly.

"_But_," Dr. Baldwin went on, ignoring the interruption, "there's nothing we can do about it. We've been able to find a few spots here and there for at least some of our population. Unfortunately, gentlemen, not a single institution in the entire country wants to take you and your associates on. Until the construction ends, you will be sharing this room. I advise that you find a way to do it amicably."

"Amicably? Have you ever _talked_ to this lunatic?" Two-Face snapped, gesturing sharply at Jervis, who stuck his beaky nose into the air and delivered a haughty look to the wall.

"Well, no. Not outside of our sessions here, at any rate," he amended.

"Figures. What about _his_ therapist? Where's she been?" Two-Face demanded.

"She's been assigned elsewhere." Lord only knew what kind of blackmail she'd had on the head psychiatrist to get away from Tetch for a few precious months. "You have to find a compromise between yourselves to get through this."

Two-Face glared at the Mad Hatter. "Compromise? With _him_?"

"_I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried hedges_," Jervis explained to the doctor, "_but them serpents! There's no pleasing 'em_!"

Dr. Baldwin paused for a moment, working out what the Hatter was trying to convey. Two-Face, who had spent the last twenty days doing nothing but translating Wonderlandese into normal English, shot him the most incandescent of death-glares. "You've tried everything but shutting up," he growled savagely.

"_Really, you are very dull_," Jervis sniffed, ignoring the almost tangible waves of sullen anger exuding from his cellmate.

The coin rose. The coin fell. Two-Face glared at the coin as if it was the source of all his troubles – which, in a way, it was – and jammed it back into his pocket.

"Jervis," warned Dr. Baldwin, "you're not helping."

"_Well! Of all the unjust things_ -" Jervis spluttered indignantly.

"The two of you need to find a way to get along," Dr. Baldwin said, ignoring Tetch's tetchiness.

"The two of _us_," Dent said, "want nothing to do with _him_."

Dr. Baldwin pinched the bridge of his nose again. While it was nice that his personalities could agree on something for once, did it have to be _this_? "Harvey, really."

Jervis shot Harvey a sly smile. "_It's no use now, thought poor Alice, to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!_"

The coin traveled its familiar arc in the air. In an instant, Two-Face had Jervis by the neck of his jumpsuit, shaking him like an overenthusiastic maraca player. "If you quote that book at me _one more goddamn time-_"

"Gentlemen! _Gentlemen_!" Dr. Baldwin snapped, the stern tone of his voice at odds with his perpetually cheerful round bearded face. Despite his repeated and hopeful use of the word, the two men grappling on the bottom bunk were hardly gentlemen, and thus they completely failed to take any notice of him.

With a sigh, Dr. Baldwin waved a hand at the window. Instantly, a pair of orderlies armed with syringes stormed in, separating the two combatants with practiced ease.

Jervis kicked uselessly as a needle jabbed right through the fabric of his jumpsuit and into his leg. Then, as the sedatives swarmed through his veins, he smiled gently and snuggled deeper into the rough fabric of the blanket. "_William the Conqueror, whose cause was favored by the Pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted...leaders..._" His sleep-interrupted quote was answered by a slow, buzzing snore rising from Two-Face's gaping mouth.

Dr. Baldwin gathered up his chair and clipboard and followed the orderlies out of the cell. So much for therapy.

* * *

Poison Ivy sat crosslegged on the floor of the cell. Expert fingers slid through her damp hair, gently winding each lock into a complicated figure-eight around a piece of broken bedspring and tying the finished product in place with a makeshift scrunchie that had once been part of an asylum-issued tube sock. It was somewhat soothing, rather like the times that her vines would cuddle lovingly up to her, stroking her face with smooth green leaves.

The only difference was that her vines didn't tend to sing pop songs at full volume. At least she'd managed to steer Harley to some songs with half-decent lyrics. "..._Plant a seed, plant a flower, plant a rose_, _you can plant any one of those,_" Harley chirped, fixing the last hairtie in place. "There ya go, Red. Let it dry and you won't believe how curly it'll get!" Before Ivy could reply, Harley was in motion, handspringing off the bed and doing a completely unnecessary backflip to reach the sink.

Ivy ducked a flying foot. "Are we done?"

"No way. Makeovers aren't just for hair, y'know. There's clothes an' makeup an' nails an' - "

"Harley," Ivy interrupted tiredly, "you do know we're in Arkham, don't you?"

"So what?"

"So where are you planning on getting makeup and clothes?"

"Improvising," Harley shrugged. She reached into the small pile of her belongings on the floor and ferreted out a small assortment of napkin-wrapped bundles. "See?" she said, unwrapping them one at a time for Ivy's inspection. "This is that raspberry lemonade powder they gave us last Tuesday."

"The one that tastes like battery acid?"

"You got it. But it looks like blush, right?"

Ivy shrugged.

"Right," Harley answered herself. "And I saved up some of those guanfacine they keep tryin' to get me to take. They're nice and green. So we crush 'em up like this - " she hammered on the pills with the heel of her shoe until they were nothing but little crumbly heaps of powder. " - an' we mix 'em with some deodorant, like this...and presto! Eyeshadow."

Ivy eyed the mixture dubiously. "You want me to put that on my face?"

"Trust me."

Harley peeled open another bundle to reveal a tiny bottle of nail polish.

"I know you didn't find _that_ on the lunch tray," Ivy said, picking up the miniature glass bottle. All sorts of wonderfully nasty things could be done with nail polish, even in such tiny amounts. Hell, even the bottle could probably make a decent weapon, or at least provide an unexpectedly sharp surprise on an unguarded neck.

"You pay the guards enough, they'll getcha what you want," Harley shrugged, retrieving the little bottle from Ivy's thoughtful grasp. "At least this was easier to get in than that jack-in-the-box that Puddin' filled with acid squirters." She scooted her materials closer to Ivy and knelt in front of her. The collection of napkins shone with their brightly-colored contents, resembling nothing so much as a post-apocalyptic beauty shop. "Ready or not, here I come!" she said playfully, scooping up a fingerful of greenish paste. Ivy hastily shut her eyes.

* * *

Like many nocturnal people, Mr. Scarface enjoyed nothing better in the mid-afternoon than some quality time with Mr. Sandman. His naps, often two to three hours long, left Arnold Wesker with a handful of precious minutes to devote to taking care of himself rather than his tyrannical little boss.

Arnold sat on the chilly floor of the cell, flicking idly through a book. He didn't often get a chance to sit quietly and read on the outside. There was always something to do – henchmen to hire, plans to put in motion, supplies to acquire – and Mr. Scarface preferred that Arnold should do all those little mundane things while he wasn't awake to be bored by them. It was almost nice to be here in the asylum, with nothing to do but read and wait for tomorrow to come. He settled against the cold stone wall, sliding the book into a slightly more comfortable position on his knee.

"Good book?"

Arnold looked up, startled, to see that Mitchell Mayo had seated himself against the plexiglass window of their cell, so close that their feet were almost touching. "I-I-I..." he stammered, cringing away.

Mayo sighed. "Wesker, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm bored. We've been in here, what, three weeks? I gotta talk to someone or I'm gonna go crazy." He winced, instantly regretting his word choice. "You know what I mean."

"I shouldn't...I mean...Mr. Scarface said that..." Arnold drew his knees up protectively around his book. "I'm not supposed to talk to you," he said quietly.

"Yeah? He doesn't seem to mind," Mayo said, jerking a thumb at the bottom bunk's tiny occupant.

"He's sleeping," Arnold said softly. "If he knew I talked to you, he'd kill us both."

Mayo looked at the bottom bunk again. Arnold, ears burning with shame, knew what was going through the other man's mind. He was going to say the same thing that they all did – that Mr. Scarface wasn't really alive, wasn't really real. They didn't know. They didn't hear his voice in the night, telling him what to do – ordering him around – pushing and pushing and never letting up, never, and how could he hear him so clearly if he wasn't real? All the pills and potions in the world would never ever erase Mr. Scarface because _he was real_ even if no one here believed it.

Mayo shrugged and raked his thinning hair back with one hand. "Then he doesn't have to know," he whispered. "So. Good book?"

Arnold gaped for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. "It's _By George_," he offered timidly.

"Never heard of him."

Arnold had a brief urge to explain that no, that was the title, not the author. But then he'd probably have to go into what it was about, and how he'd managed to get it into his cell, which would reveal exactly which guard he'd bribed to smuggle it in, and who knew where _that_ would lead.

"So what do you read?" he asked timorously.

"I don't really relish books," Mayo said. "I mostly watch TV."

"Cooking shows?"

"You know it." Excitement sparked in the other man's eyes. "You ever seen Sandy Lou? On the food channel? Oh, man, that one knows how to work a ketchup bottle -"

"Ssssh!" Arnold hissed, whipping his head around to stare at the lower bunk. The two men waited, silently staring at the little wooden figure under the thin blanket. When it was safe to speak, Arnold turned an anxiety-ridden grimace on Mayo. "You almost woke him up!"

"Sorry," Mayo shrugged, returning to a barely audible whisper. "So anyway, you ever watch the food channel?"

* * *

Dinner arrived in the cells at precisely five o'clock. At least, that's when it was _meant_ to arrive. Thanks to the various timing problems of personally serving a few hundred inmates with a few dozen staff, not to mention the wait for the cafeteria to dish up more trays, dinner actually arrived somewhere between five-fifteen and seven-thirty.

The orderly delivering Harley and Ivy's dinners carefully slid the trays through the door slot one by one. "There you are, ladies, enjoy your-" He stopped, mouth gaping wide, as he caught sight of the prospective diners.

"What?" Ivy snapped defensively.

"Nothing. Nothing!" he repeated as his lip started to twitch. "Enjoy your dinner!" He bustled to the next cell, emitting a sound that was either a serious nasal malfunction or a burst of hastily suppressed laughter.

Ivy turned a suspicious look on Harley. "What did you do to me?"

Harley, her eyelids tinted a beautiful Klonopin blue, shrugged. "I fixed your hair, I did your makeup. You look great," she added happily. "Maybe I really shoulda gone to beauty school." She smiled with lemonade-powder-stained lips.

Ivy picked up a spoon from her tray and examined herself in the warped reflection. Her hair was done all right – done in a curly, frizzy fluff that looked like a cheap red afro wig. The orangey Thorazine streaks that Harley had added as highlights merely highlighted the horrorshow happening on her head. Because Ivy's skin was nearly the same green as the 'eyeshadow', Harley had compensated by smearing it in a thick glob almost up to her eyebrows. Pink blush stood out palely on her green cheeks. Cherry-red smudges on her chest marked where she'd come in contact with her bra, which Harley had enthusiastically dyed in their sink with Kool-Aid while her hair had dried.

"What did you _do_ to me?" Ivy snapped, whirling to glare at Harley.

"I told ya, I made ya prettier!"

"You made me look like a clown!"

"Isn't that what I said?" Harley shrugged, ducking as a suddenly airborne spoon winged through the air at her. "Well, ya don't have to be so cranky, Red."

* * *

Arkham was never a particularly quiet place. Doctors barked orders to the orderlies scuttling along behind them. Guards with radios dangling from their belts filled the air with staccato static bursts as they sauntered along their routes. Orderlies going about their business stopped and chatted amiably with one another in the halls, often right outside an inmate's door as they were trying to sleep.

As for the inmates, there was always a complaint to be voiced, a speech to be given, or a muttered rant to deliver to the little pink pixies dancing on your pillow. Things had only gotten worse in the weeks since the fire. Oh, certainly the inmates were loud enough – being paired up only gave them audiences to chatter at – but the real noise came from the remains of the building, where construction equipment deconstructed what was left of Arkham's southeast wing. Shrieks of bulldozers biting into bricks mingled with the steady scraping of excavators clawing ashes and ancient blackened stone out of the dirt. The plastic sheets that covered the gaping holes in the walls rustled incessantly, both from the wind and from the constant movement of the trios of anxious, well-armed guards stationed in front of them. Even now, at night, the sound of heavy machinery and shifting stonework grated on the edge of hearing.

The Riddler sat crosslegged in his bed, elbows resting on his knees. Two bleary blue eyes blinked slowly as he did his best to stay upright. He wasn't about to give Crane the satisfaction of falling asleep again. No more Cirque du Terreur to keep the Scarecrow entertained through Arkham's dark, lonely nights. No, no. He was going to stay awake until he was so tired that he wouldn't be able to move, let alone have any damnably loud nightmares. Forty-eight hours without sleep hadn't been easy, but it would be worth it in the end. Yes. He'd curl up on the bed, and it wouldn't matter that it was a hard Arkham mattress because it would feel like soft comfy heaven to cuddle down on and drift off to sweet, blessed slumber...

He jerked his head up, half-aware that it had drifted down to rest comfortably on the wall. No. Comfort meant sleep, and sleep meant that the Scarecrow would win. No. He briskly rubbed his face, slapping his cheeks a bit in the hope that pain would be a decent substitute for caffeine, and stared into the hallway. Nothing new there. No orderlies, no guards, just a perfect view into Tetch and Dent's six-by-eight cell as they slept the well-drugged sleep of anyone caught fighting inside the asylum.

Distant metal squealed sharply, loud enough to penetrate through the thick walls of the cells. The lights died with a sad whine. The room was immediately plunged into darkness, save for the tiny dim strip of moonlight shining in from the window.

The Riddler swung his back against the wall and scrambled to get free of his blanket. The last time Arkham had lost power when he'd been in residence, the resulting riot had landed him in the hospital wing for two weeks. Well, he wasn't going to get caught unawares this time. No more head injuries for Edward Nygma. He peered into the hallway, eyes wide, tensed to spring, ignoring the hastily discarded bedding by his side.

Springs below him squeaked. Maybe it wasn't a riot he had to worry about. Visions of horrible, terrible nightmares danced through Eddie's sleep-deprived brain. Would Crane take the blackout as an invitation to break out the toxin that Eddie was certain that he had? Was the man really that desperate to witness fear that two days without seeing one of Eddie's nightmares was enough to push him that far?

He slapped himself across the face again to assist the adrenaline dancing through his veins in the monumental task of keeping him alert.

"Edward," the Scarecrow's voice oiled out of the darkness below him.

"No," Eddie snapped. "No. Whatever you have planned, whatever you're thinking, whatever sick little idea is brewing in that carrot-top head of yours – no. Just forget it." He swung himself out of bed, sacrificing the questionable safety of the top bunk in favor of standing somewhere where he could keep one sleep-blurred paranoid eye on Jonathan Crane. He hit the floor with all the graceless force of a sack of concrete tossed out of a treehouse. Instead of cold tile, the floor below his feet felt – soft?

Soft and slippery. Eddie skated uncontrollably on the soft thing across the patch of well-worn linoleum, coming to an abrupt halt as he slammed bodily into the plexiglass window. He yelped with pain, staggering backward, and tripped on the soft thing, sailing back in a perfect arc to land flat on his backside on the cold, slick floor. Momentum carried him onward until he came to a sudden stop as the back of his head slammed into the metal bedpost with a reverberating _clang_.

"You dropped your pillow," Crane said helpfully, an audible smirk in his tone.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Jervis' dialogue is, as always, courtesy of Lewis Carroll. Harley's song is Mmmbop by Hanson, which is astonishingly more agricultural than I remembered. Wesley Stace wrote 'By George', a lovely novel about – yes – a ventriloquist's dummy, among other things. Sandy Lou – er, Sandra Lee – does some fascinating things on her show, though I wouldn't necessarily term them "cooking" so much as "catastrophes". Kwanzaa cake, anyone? _


End file.
